Monday, November 30, 2015

“All
lives matter” is a generalized truism.“Black
Lives Matter” is a specific truth.Those
who invoke the first as a corrective of the second just don’t get it.By imposing the general “all”, they dismiss
the stark fact of unfinished business.The whole point of the Black Lives Matter movement is that the specific
counts and to ignore or deny it can no longer be excused — even if it hurts or
upends some of our myths.I’m reminded
that parents often hug a fallen and injured young child with the “comforting”
words, “all better”.Of course it isn’t
always all better, sometimes far from it.Despite undeniable progress, when it comes to race there remains an immense
gap between “all better” and reality.

The
Black Lives Matter protests gained real momentum after the deaths of Michael
Brown and Eric Garner focusing specifically on police killings of unarmed young African
Americans — twice
as many as unarmed whites. It is
emerging as a leading force in a larger 21st Century civil rights movement.The newest student initiated battleground of
protest is universities, perhaps most notably the ivy covered campus of
Princeton, First Lady Michelle Obama’s Alma Mater.Here the focus is on the legacy of Woodrow Wilson its
president (1902-10) who went on to serve as Governor of New Jersey and President
of the United States.

We think
of Wilson as a two term progressive, a reformer usually ranked in the top ten
of our presidents.Among others, he
supported and signed into law the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Anti-trust
Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act and reinstated federal income taxes.Wilson led the nation during World War I and
then lobbied so intensively for the League of Nations that it permanently impared
this health.After a stroke, his wife
Edith is said to have effectively taken over his executive duties.While leaving office an enfeebled physical shadow of his
former self, he is remembered as a vigorous pioneering champion of world peace. But Wilson also had a far darker side — a
Southern racist who intentionally turned back the progress that African
Americans had made especially, writes Gordon
Davis in a Times OP Ed, within
the Civil Service.

The
whole point of Black Lives Matter, and of the current movement as a whole, is that it's time we stop giving people or institutions a pass just because they also do or did good
things.The police who protect us are
suffering such scrutiny.Wilson’s case
may be less obvious than that of William
Sanders, the Confederate Army officer and alleged KKK member for whom a
building was named on the UNC Chapel Hill campus. After student protests, it has been replaced.But as president of the university and then
of the United States, Wilson had far more power, not to mention a biography
that often glosses over his consequential racism.The objective of the student led protest is
to remove
Wilson’s name from the campus including its distinguished Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs.A November
24 NY
Times editorial supports their efforts.

Wilson
presents a complex case, one marked by great inconsistencies.His politics were generally progressive but
his racist views reflected those held by many Southerners of his time and after.
The worst of Jim Crow was yet to come. I would argue they continue in, for example, the
region’s Republican controlled legislatures’ determination to undermine minority voting
in the guise of protecting us from fraud. The Twenty-fourth
Amendment, ratified in 1964, may have outlawed poll taxes, but their
progeny are alive and well in the form of ID laws in force or pending in mostly
Southern states.Wilson, according to Gordon
Davis, ruined his grandfather’s life by upending a promising rising career in
public service, downgrading him to messenger status at half his original salary
just because he was Black.“Wilson”,
says Davis (a distinguished lawyer, public servant and civic leader), “was not
just a racist. He believed in white supremacy as government policy, so much so
that he reversed decades of racial progress. But we would be wrong to see this as a mere
policy change; in doing so, he ruined the lives of countless talented
African-Americans and their families.” The grandson still grieves.

Enter
another grandson, the late Francis Bowes
Sayre, Jr., longtime Dean of Washington’s National Cathedral.To those of us who grew up in the 1960s civil
rights movement, Francis Sayre was among its heroes.These decades after, you may not even know
his name or that he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma.But as dean of the Capital’s emblematic establishment
church where funerals of presidents and notables are held, what Sayre said
counted.While clergy played a
significant role in civil rights some among the leaders of more establishment institutions
chose to remain quiet if not silent.They opted for quiet, not wanting to stir things up or to offend. Sayre would have none of that.He was a social and liberal activist, vocally opposing
segregation but also McCarthyism and the Viet Nam War; all of this from the
seat of power in the nation’s capital.Francis Sayre, Jr. was Woodrow Wilson’s first grandchild, born in his White House.

While
meeting him once in his later years, I don’t know if Sayre’s civil rights
activism was driven by his grandfather’s racism — an overt rejection of it or
an effort of family redemption.Surely
he isn’t the only child of segregationist families to move in that direction;
the South is replete with them.What is
significant here, and what makes it all so complex, is that the story of America’s
“Original Sin” remains one of many contradictions.Senator Sam Ervin a pivotal figure in
bringing down Richard Nixon, was a dedicated Segregationist.It’s our great enigma.In 2008 we elected the first African American
president and people were talking — in retrospect fanatisizing — of post-racialism.The gap between the promise of that hope and
reality proved enormous.In the
election’s euphoric wake we all averted our eyes.Gerald Ford’s pronouncement that “our
long national nightmare is over” may have pertained with Richard Nixon, but it
surely can't be applied to race relations in this country.

Perhaps
this realization is what’s driving the protests over the Wilson named school
and building at Princeton.It’s not so
much his dark side per se, but that perhaps in giving him a pass, overlooking
his bigotry, the nation as a whole is being kept from moving forward in private
as well as in public.Not one of our
presidents has been without fault.Some
of those we admire and mythologize most were slaveholders.That Obama was elected, has served nearly
seven years, and that little if anything has changed on the race front,
especially for young Black males, serves as a stark reminder.Were it not for this obvious contradiction,
this disconnect, perhaps the current activism would not have taken root.

We can’t
change history.What’s happening at
Princeton and other campuses seems aimed at correcting our perceptions of it,
refusing to overlook sins, especially blatant ones.I’m inclined to support this myth
correcting.At the same time, as with
any broad brush, can’t help but be troubled by its one-dimensional
simplicity.Where do we draw the
line?Joseph P. Kennedy was an anti-Semite
and Hitler sympathizer.He played a
significant role in getting his son Jack elected president.Do we rename The Kennedy Center because of
family sins? Hypothetically transferring
blame to the son may present a very different situation, to say the least a
stretch, but hopefully makes the point.Many significant contributors to society have come out of the Wilson school at
Princeton.They add its name on their
resume with pride.What about them?

Joseph
Campbell, himself a man of many prejudices, spent a lifetime teaching us about
the importance of myth.Myths about our
leaders continue to resonate; indeed we rely upon them.The debate about Wilson at Princeton has if
nothing else challenged, even shattered, one of our myths.The contrast within his life presents a
confusing contradiction. Grandson Sayre’s
contrary, yes redemptive, behavior only complicates the story.Myths are and will remain of import, but so
too is symbolism.The names we attach to
buildings and institutions embody symbolism, and as such can become targets
of truth telling.Where to start and
where to stop is a valid question, one that acknowledges the complexities that
mark us as humans.Some do unquestioned
good, some clearly bad.Most of us are a
mix, hopefully heavily weighted in the right direction.

The
question before us now is what symbol is more important: Woodrow Wilson the admired
progressive or Wilson the willful bigot.Is the cost too high in erasing the symbol of accomplishment or is it more
important — and actually a relatively low cost — to recognize and admit that
our eyes have too long been averted from an ugly truth.Erasing Wilson’s name from the Princeton
campus will be painful, but let’s not underestimate its positive shock
value.Perhaps that’s exactly what we
need to help wake us up from the national fantasy that all is better, a necessary
reminder that Black Lives Matter.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

France
gifted us the Statute of Liberty. It became the iconic symbol of who and what
we are.In 1883 thirty-four year old poet
Emma Lazarus, daughter of a Sephardic Jewish
family that had settled in New York long before the Revolution, penned the
defining verse affixed to its wall.They
were words of welcome:

Give me your tired, your
poor,

Your huddled masses yearning
to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the
golden door!

Generations
of refugees, my parents included, sailed past in New York Harbor, giving special
meaning to Lazarus’ verse of welcome.They became and are America.Aside
from the very few who can claim indigenous roots, we all descend from
immigrants, many of them refugees from one tyranny or another.We are a wonderful brew of races, ethnicities
and religions.It remains our unique
identity.

It’s
instructive that Lazarus’ words speak specifically to the “huddled masses”, the
“wretched refuse” and the “homeless”.Am
I missing something, or have the xenophobic Republican presidential candidates,
governors and legislators, not heard these words — even piously recited them at
some patriotic event?Apparently they are
read or spoken by rote, without understanding.Shame on them!Of course, these
are not the first American officials to turn their backs on endangered
refugees.In the early days of World War
II, anti-Semitic State Department bureaucrats blocked Hitler refugees in the
face of impending slaughter.Japanese-American citizens were rounded up and put in detention because
of who they were, not what they had done — nothing.

This
past week, the governor of North Carolina joined mostly Republican colleagues
across the country is asking the Obama Administration to halt its plans to
welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees during the coming year.He most certainly doesn’t want them in his state.The House (with the support of 47 Democrats) passed a bill
directing the director of the FBI, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the
Director of National Intelligence to personally certify each individual
refugee. Right.Consider this in the context of the fact that
since 9/11 we have
welcomed 784,395 refugees.Of these
3 — that’s right 3 — individuals have been arrested on terrorist charges.On the other hand, between 2001
and 2013 406,496 Americans have died from gun violence verses 3,800 from
acts of terrorism.Since 2011 (a White
House email told me) the UN referred 23,092 Syrian refugees to the United
States resettlement program. Less than a third of them (7,014) qualified for
Homeland Security interviews.Of them
only 2,034 were admitted, that’s about 500 per year.The average wait is one-two years.

I could go on.These numbers remind me that many of the same
governors defend state adopted vote supression laws to combat non-existant
voter fraud.But even worse than last
week’s sorry display were suggestions by cadidates Bush and Cruz that we
welcome only Christian refugees — our kind of folks.Not to be undone, Donald Trump, who as the
current front runner must be taken seriously if only that he has a substantial
following among GOP voters, asserted that all Muslims in America be somehow
registered so that we can keep tabs on them.As the child of immigrants who fled Nazi Germany and as Jew I am
particularly sensitive to — no outraged by —any such notion.I have my maternal grandparents German identity
cards, each bearing a yellow “J” (Jude) to set them apart from their “pure”
German fellow citizens.We can trace
both of their ancestors back to the 1600s.

My grandfather Max Goldsmith's identity card.

Thankfully, they too came to the United States (1939), but so many
others did not. Many died because they
were turned away from here or elsewhere.So I look at the homeless huddled masses from Syria as sisters and
brothers to whom we should be lifting or light holding arms in a sign of
welcome.

It’s hard not to single out Donald
Trump here, despite his opponents in the nomination race being no
different.His first words as a
candidate disdained immigrants, in this case Mexicans.He advocated building a wall to contain us, a
barrier to their onslought.At the start
of his campaign many of us looked at The Donald as a showman, a bafoon in some
mock reality show role.I’ve changed my
view.I think he is more like Huey Long
than a circus barker.He is a demogogic who
leverages fear and hate for his own power hungry ambitions.He brings to mind numeroius dictators who
came to power either after a coup or equally often by espopusing an ersatz
populism that speaks to the worst human instincts.He has to be taken seriously not only as an
individual, but also as one who has, depspite the most outragerous
pronouncements, found a substantial following.

I’ve written in other posts that
this is an important election.In light
of the hysteria inflamed by candidates and public officials in the last week,
2016 will also be a test for America and our democracy.Lady Liberty represents who we have been,
our openness, hospitality and largesse.The question is whether she reflects the America of both our time and going
forward?It seems to me that the task we
face is to wipe the tears running down her cheek and, through our votes,
reaffirm that we remain and will always be a home for the free and the brave.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

October
was good to Hillary Clinton.After
months of unease — the self-inflicted email troubles didn’t help — her star
shined bright in both the first Democratic debate and before a Congressional
lions den.She came well prepared for
both, something of a trademark attribute. Hillary takes appearances seriously, sometimes
at the cost of spontaneity.But
thoughtful preparation is exactly what one would hope to see in a
president.Rehearsed zingers aside, that
is notably MIA on the Republican side.Did she win in Las Vegas?Probably yes, if you view the process as a sports event.I prefer not to.As to that circus parading as serious
fact-finding, she more than acquitted herself — the consummate
professional in the presence of hostile blustering clowns. Some say she looked presidential; they looked anything
but.

What’s
interesting in this primary season is how few policy differences there are
between competing candidates on either side.Style is another story, especially among Republicans (think Trump and
Carson).This partisan “togetherness” is
just another reflection of how homogenous the parties have become within, and conversely,
how polarized they are set against each other. Republicans have abandoned any
pretense of even a small tent by effectively purging or marginalizing any
member who does not march lockstep within a narrow conservative-right circle.Moreover, they seem to be going out of their
way in alienating Latinos, African Americans, Asians and, of course, women.In contrast, the Democrats actively seek big
tent diversity; they still accommodate some right of center office
holders.That said, Clinton, Sanders and
O’Malley all identify as progressives, probably representative of where their
party at large is or is heading.The
bottom line: more than in the past, we have a fairly closely defined party of
the Moderate Left and a party of the Hard Right.Those positions have solidified during the
Obama years but they have been long in coming.The result, as Jonathan
Chait put it in a recent New York Magazine post, “…the dominant fact of
American politics is that nobody is changing their mind about anything.”

The
fluidity that existed within parities in much of the last century — their respective
big tents — is gone. I agree with
Chait’s analysis.If you share this view,
it’s hardly surprising that the “debates”, on both sides exposed almost no substantive
policy disagreements among each party’s candidates.Democrats may express nuanced differences,
and Bernie may claim to have come to progressive positions earlier, but today they
sing from a single hymnal. If for no
other reason than the sheer number of contenders, Republicans seem most
focused on projecting their differentiated persona.They mouth slogans and pretend they are
engaging on policy. Since their ideology
is indistinguishable, they spend time seeing how each can outdo the other in
singing (or shouting) the same songs.To
distract us, they are now engaged in that old favorite, a full throttle attack
on the unfair prejudiced “liberal media”, which I assume now includes Fox
News.They are not the first politicians
to shift blame on journalists when things are not going their way or to avoid
hard questions.Nevertheless, listening
to their collective gripe, one would think they are an unjustly persecuted and
beleaguered minority rather than holders of the majority on the Hill and across
many state legislatures and governor’s mansions.It rings as true as claims that Christians are
being persecuted in a country with a still predominantly Christian
population.We all should be so
disadvantaged.

Anyone
who regularly reads these posts knows I have been struggling with Hillary
Clinton’s 2016 candidacy, much as I did eight years ago.Dynasty has always been one of my concerns,
perhaps too much so.In all fairness
since John Quincy Adams ascended to the presidency, and likely before, office
holding has been a family business: fathers and sons, husbands and wives (often
widows), siblings and cousins.The
disaster of George W Bush probably made many of us more sensitive to its
downside.Jeb’s candidacy, albeit inept, hasn’t helped.On the
other hand, the performance of father/son Governors Brown of California or
brothers Senator/Congressman Levin of Michigan speak to the strengths of a
family vocation.There are countless
examples, most notably the cousins Roosevelt.I shouldn’t hold Bill against Hillary and indeed things went pretty well
for us during his tenure.

I was also
troubled by Hillary’s hawkishness and remain so.While she regrets her Iraq vote, taking it wasn’t
surprising when it came.She was among
Obama’s more hawkish advisors while at State.That said, in contrast to the gun happy GOP field — there isn’t a war
they wouldn’t have someone else’s kids fight — she is a raging dove.

What
Clinton does bring to the table, as she did in ’08, is her gender.It’s what made having to choose between her
and potentially the first African American president so painful. It’s a gross understatement to say that we are
long overdue in electing a woman to the White House. It’s time to break, not merely to crack, that
glass ceiling.She alone — forget smooth
talking Carly — is positioned to do so. It
isn’t only that she’s a woman, but perhaps the “perfect
transitional figure”, as Gail Collins put it in her excellent
column about women and the presidency. Of course, being a woman is not enough. Secretary Clinton doesn’t
have to rely on her gender to make the case.She has the résumé.As the spot
light shines on today’s presidential aspirants none on either side is more
capable or more prepared.She has had a
central place at the table in facing our national/international
opportunities and challenges for more than two decades.She was a senior policy advisor to her
husband; perhaps the most influential first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt.She was respected across the aisle while serving
in the Senate, and a hard working State Secretary.I twice, and happily, voted for her to
represent us in New York.

At this
moment, Hillary is ahead in most polls, probably decisively.Her lead was solidified by those star
performances in Las Vegas and Washington.Latest reports
suggest that she sent no classified emails from her private account.Bernie Sanders is out on the stump.Perhaps behind in the polls, he nonetheless
is drawing huge enthusiastic crowds including many young people.He is successfully crowd-funding — his
contributions are predominantly small.Bernie’s success, contained as it might ultimately be, shines a light on
Hillary’s primary weakness.She suffers
an enthusiasm gap, even as she gains support and seems headed for the
nomination.I was a passionate supporter
of Barack Obama. At this point, my
support for Hillary Clinton is more muted, all from the head not the heart.

Intellectually,
I know that she is more than qualified to be our president.While I will continue to have concerns about
her hawkishness, she has clearly moved to the left since last running and I
have no reason to doubt that is backed up by conviction, a rethinking of issues and our
needs.I for one don’t fault leaders
who change their mind; I am actually more comfortable with them.One of our greatest problems today is that so
many people in power, including sadly our highest court, have ideologically
fixed positions that seem immune to facts, especially contrary facts.I do feel passionately about the prospect of
a Ms. President.In that there is
absolutely no enthusiasm gap.

It may
well be that the head is enough, that it even trumps the heart.As the author and former editor Jeffrey Frank
put it so well in a New Yorker post this week, running for office is “dangerously
removed from the realities of governing.”That’s true for the candidate and equally true for us, the voters.As I’ve noted before, it’s why so many of
those who enthusiastically — heart over head — supported and turned out for
Senator Barack Obama were disappointed in President Obama.But however “dangerously removed”, I do think
that enthusiasm does count if for no other reason than our being such an
irresponsibly lazy electorate.Only 30%
of eligible voters turned out in Kentucky last week, likely a prime reason the
governor’s mansion changed hands.Democrats can be the laziest most irresponsible voters — good at
complaining terrible at delivering the only thing we have in the political process.Think not only last week but also 2014 and most
“off year” elections.Check out
Republican victories in those years. They vote. We
can’t afford to be lazy in fulfilling our obligation of citizenship.Yes, Hillary, we need you to make us more
enthusiastic, more passionate, about your candidacy, but most of all we have to
get ourselves together.No excuses, it
must be done.

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About Me

A branding consultant with decades of experience working with large global clients and brands, he now serves primarily young startup companies. Beginning his professional life as a rabbi of a large urban congregation, he has watched the numbers of the religiously unaffiliated grow in the years since leaving the pulpit. His book, Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars (available on Amazon) considers this phenomenon. Beyond his consulting practice Prinz spends much of his time writing, including this Blog. He posts to "Beyond All That" only when there is something to say that might add value to the conversation.